Posted By Joe Murphy On March 13, 2013 @ 1:22 pm In Events,Tech+,Technology | No Comments

AUSTIN — San Francisco’s Leap Motion[1] has something that could be hot on their hands. At the South by Southwest Interactive conference this year, their tent across the street from Austin’s Convention Center buzzed with people, with press, playing with their new device, the Leap Motion Controller[2].

The device, with its two infrared cameras and three LEDs, allows you to interact with your computer with your hands and fingertips.

Most immediately, this is something that would be fun to play games with. Leap Motion[3] representatives said they believe there are other uses too. Leap Motion will open an app store[4] similar to Apple[5]’s App Store[6] that allows software developers to build apps that use the controller. Already 12,000 developers, including some at NASA[7], have signed up to build apps, said Mike Yasko, Leap Motion’s Manager of App Review. “NASA[7]’s building a way to explore the universe on your computer,” he said.

The app store is available to people on Macintosh and Windows operating systems. The controller starts shipping May 13th 2013, and retails for $79.99.

This is what the puck-ish device looks like:

[8]

[media-credit id=2 align=”alignleft” width=”495″][/media-credit] The Leap Motion Controller is a device that lets you use your hands and fingers to interact with your computer. It has two infrared cameras and three LEDs.

Watch the Leap Motion Controller in action:

Watch the Leap Motion Controller as it plays a non-Jenga version of Jenga: